*******www.edmunds****/insideline/do/Drives/FullTests/articleId=126103
---
For a few seconds, you give in to the spectacle of driving a 2009 Nissan GT-R. This car attracts its own entourage and then takes you along for the ride. It's not just the Skyline mystique, either. It's the fact that even in production sheet metal, the R35 GT-R looks like a one-off concept stolen from a Southern California design studio. It has as many hard contours as a Porsche 911 has soft curves. You have the key fob, and still you ogle it.
Soon, though, you point the GT-R down an on-ramp and plant the throttle. The effortless brutality with which the 2009 Nissan GT-R gathers speed is what you'll describe to your friends — once everyone's tired of talking about the styling, that is.
What you won't tell them is that you suspect your supercar might be a sociopath. It doesn't flow around corners like your E46 BMW M3 did, nor does it transmit feedback through the steering wheel for the sheer pleasure of it.
Instead, the 2009 Nissan GT-R bends asphalt to its will. When it talks to you about tire grip, you get the feeling it's only bothering because you're part of its great plan to break free of the Earth's orbit. Should it ever achieve this, you imagine that its conversation will cease and it will simply expel you into the airless void. Until then, though, you have the conn.

*******www.edmunds****/insideline/do/Drives/FullTests/articleId=126279
---
"I like it," he yelled from across the parking lot.
"It's a 2009 Subaru Forester," we shouted back.
"I know," he said. "Looks good."
Typically we'd rate this quick exchange right up there with catcalls from construction workers, but when these few words of light praise come from the biggest BMW snob ever to rub a Roundel, "like" and "good" take on a whole new meaning.
Pulling away, we sat up a little taller in the Forester's driver seat, tossing a saucy flip of hair to the indifferent gate attendant.

*******www.edmunds****/insideline/do/Drives/FirstDrives/articleId=126335
---
Look at me. Don't touch. Chase me. That's enough. Good-bye. Like the biggest tease you've ever met, a Lamborghini has stunning lines that irresistibly attract your attention, yet it's expressly designed to run away from just about anyone and anything in a heartbeat.
And so it remains with the 2009 Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4, only more so. Cruise slowly, troll the cityscape, be seen, sneer at the gawkers and pretend you don't love it. This is a car that displays a raging V10 engine under a hatch that's inset with glass, and yet it can get away from the rabble at a top speed of 202 mph.

*******www.edmunds****/insideline/do/Drives/Followup/articleId=128626
---
Since the introduction of the 2002 Nissan Altima, things have looked bleak for the Nissan Maxima. With both cars sharing the same corporate D-platform and offering the same VQ-Series V6, Maxima sales have declined and now the Altima outsells it by a margin of 5-to-1.
Yet Maximists have held on to the despondent model, once memorably billed as a four-door sports car (4DSC), and they bought more than 52,000 examples of Nissan's flagship last year. The 2009 Nissan Maxima is their reward for enduring underdog status and failed styling exercises over the past few years.
With a new 290-horsepower V6, a new look and a new dedication to its heritage as Nissan's 4DSC, the 2009 Nissan Maxima once again looks and acts like not only the top sedan in Nissan's lineup but also a serious player among front-wheel-drive sedans from any maker.

*******www.edmunds****/insideline/do/Drives/FirstDrives/articleId=125573
--- Honda knows the difference between revision and improvement, and you can see the evidence in the 2009 Honda Pilot. It looks different, only the same. Or maybe it's the same, only different. But what you can't see are the dozens and dozens of places within this utility package where the Honda engineers have fiddled with the details.
It's easy to imagine the Honda engineers swarming over the 2009 Honda Pilot, relentlessly improving space-efficiency, utility, fuel economy and performance. It is the Honda Way, the thorough refinement of a mechanical device into a form that is supremely functional, pure and simple.
Only these particular Honda engineers are a bunch of guys from Ohio at Honda R&D Americas, and they've tried to make the 2009 Honda Pilot into the right kind of crossover for Americans.

*******www.edmunds****/insideline/do/Drives/FullTests/articleId=125955 ---
Bruised and bloodied, Jaguar's fate now rests in the hands of Indian automaker Tata. The only certainty of its future is that it is uncertain.
Now forget about all that. Turn your attention to the product, which is ultimately the most critical aspect of an automaker's success. Here we have the 2009 Jaguar XF Supercharged, purportedly ready to do battle with the big German sedans like the Audi A6, BMW 5 Series and Mercedes-Benz E-Class, cars that know the luxury sedan game.
Only time will tell the story of Jaguar as it enters the next phase of its existence, but we can peek a few pages forward simply by testing the fruits of its labor.